The University at Buffalo has launched the Department of Materials Design and Innovation, a forward-leaning, interdisciplinary initiative that will address demand for new materials. The department is possible thanks to Buffalo alumnus and ACerS honorary member Erich Bloch’s generous donation of $1.5 million for an endowed chair to lead the new department.

A team of University of Maryland researchers is growing vertically aligned “forests” of carbon nanotubes on 3D conductive substrates to explore their potential use as a cathode in next-gen lithium batteries. The nanotubes are grown on a porous, “sponge-like” foam structure made of nickel coated with aluminum oxide ceramic.

Scientists at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Lab have made the first direct observations of a 1D boundary separating two different, atom-thin materials. Theorists have predicted the existence of intriguing properties between two crystalline components, but experimental verification had previously eluded researchers.

A study at the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory explains why a thin layer of iron selenide superconducts at much higher temperatures when placed atop a material composed of strontium, titanium, and oxygen. The study suggests how to engineer superconductors that work at higher temperatures.

Researchers at Northwestern University are studying how to isolate atomically thin sheets of molybdenum disulfide at a larger scale. To do so, researchers have developed methods for exfoliating thin layers of graphene from graphite using solution-based methods.

A team of researchers from Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has discovered an entirely new form of crystalline order, which simultaneously exhibits both crystal and polycrystalline properties, or “interlaced crystals,” in nanoparticles of copper-indium sulfide.

A team of Carnegie scientists has synthesized an entirely new form of silicon that has a quasi-direct band gap that falls within the desired range for solar absorption. The silicon is a so-called allotrope that consists of an interesting zeolite-type open framework.